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My Tim

When I began this blog I intended to somehow, eventually, try to describe Tim. It was atleast one, of a myriad of other reason’s. Yet I’ve stumbled on it. I haven’t known where to start. How do I describe someone who sometimes I’m not even sure I knew? Tim kept his cards close, rarely giving you any idea of what he was really up to. He just expected you to either be with him, or not. Stunningly, most were with him. Even though Tim was NOT good with money (especially other people’s), told some tall tales on occasion, and delved in and out over his 51 years through the subterranean path of addiction…people loved him.

Tim was fun to have around, he always said what he thought, and he cared about your welfare. Often he was too wrapped up in helping out someone else, then to deal with his own crap. And Tim had managed to acquire a good deal of “crap” over the years. OCD, Dyslexia and I’m sure ADHD to boot…contributed to his inability to successfully work for someone else, for any length of time. However, working for yourself is a job of balancing win-falls with downturns, and Tim I think sometimes just had too many balls in the air at one time. He couldn’t focus, and most of his adult life he struggled with this.

At the time I met Tim, he was knee-deep in the music industry. He was basically an Administrative Assistant, of sorts, for a bunch of musicians who toured the Blues circuit in and around Toronto. After the weekend gigs, Monday morning he’d head back up to his families Cottage at the Lake for the week. His background had been in construction, but again, he had the skills just not the ability to maintain a steady flow of income with it. Tim didn’t need very much to live on so he got along with the occasional job…mostly handyman type stuff, some basic electric and plumbing jobs, but sometimes more complex redesigns of kitchens or bathrooms. He sort of did it all, and he was good at it. Had clever fixes for things, and always knew a trick or two. Tim was a borrower, lets say. He was good, kind, gentle … but just don’t give him money to hold on to, or lend him and expect not to have to nag him for.

Being at the Cottage full-time, without all that weekend “Alice in Wonderland” world, he began to change. Slowly, he started to relax and stop the whirlwind…out of the rabbit hole. Give me a remote cottage, a garden, forests and I’m happy. I don’t require anything more. You can have the clubs and pubs and dancing till dawn to some thumping beat…even take the guitars and drums and bass {if you must}…all I need are campfires, and the stars over my head to be Jupiter or Mars.

Tim wanted this too. He’d just got caught up in the web of chaos of that urban world and lost who he was. The Lake brought him back. When he wasn’t moving so fast, he could be silly and very sentimental.

He was the kind of guy you either loved or hated. But frankly, I think that really maybe just revealed the wheat from the chaff. There are people out there, more than just a few, that miss him. The world is just a wee bit less fun without Tim in it. It’s never going to be quite the same. I will never meet another quite like him. He had the power to just whisk you off, either to the dance floor or from your woes. He was an ear, a shoulder, or just a good friend when you needed one.

He met people easily and by the end of any stay in any room, one way or another, most of those folks would be effected in some way by him. He would be a new friend, a good friend, an old friend, or a pain in the a$$ you can’t wait to get away from.

The video was taken in one of the elevator lobby’s of the Royal York Hotel, Mikey on the keys, Tim being Tim.

It does feel good to write about this. I was walking Irish the other day, and it hit me that if I DON’T write about him soon, I’ll forget some of these things I thought and felt. So much gets white-washed over the years, but the more you write down, the more authentically you can look back on them. That’s important, because Tim was a special one. People were so drawn to him, and he could engender such conflicting emotions, but in the end I really think he would want to be known as a good friend.

Sounds like your Kaz was very similar…are you familiar with Richard Bach’s book ONE? He writes of meeting those other versions of yourself who made those slightly different choices somewhere along the line…and how all your experiences, large or small, define who you are today. It is a beautiful read, but I found I had to be in the right frame of mind for it.

Yes, this is why I wrote about Kaz and me immediately, not on blog but privately. I actually made a list of every significant memory, then described each one with as much detail as possible. It was really hard!!! But felt good too. I forced myself to do it because I was afraid of forgetting. I’ve already forgotten so many specific things about my mother and it makes me sad.

I haven’t heard of ONE, but it sounds awesome. I’ll have to check it out. Kaz used to watch a show called FRINGE, about the same characters in two parallel dimensions. I think one side was trying to solve crimes in the other, or something like that.

I love that you’re giving us a glimpse of Tim. He sounds like so much fun! The “cards close to the chest” and “guy everyone wants to be around” sounds like Kaz. Though Kaz was good with money. Actually he had a reputation for being a bit of a penny-pincher. Hope it feels good to write about your Tim. I totally get a sense of who he was, why you and others were drawn to him, and why the world is less fun without him.

Question – sometimes on my site the comments appear above the comment I’m responding to, rather then below…when this happens I”m never sure if it went through the right way. Did you get a notification of my reply I sent earlier? Just curious.

No, the one for this post. If I reply in the navigation area it always ( I think) goes underneath, and the commentor receives a notification. Sometimes if reply inside from the area underneath the post itself, it loads it above the comment I’m responding to, and you don’t get a notification. I have had this happen a couple times (that I no of) with comments I’ve made on some one elses blog. I just happened to go back and revisit the post, and there is a reply I didn’t get notification on.

Oh, okay, now I see what happened. I didn’t get a notification of your original reply because on your end it’s a new comment. I tend to reply in the navigation area (upper right)… though now WordPress just send an update to my Android phone and I’m getting notifications via phone to every activity (like, comment, new follower). I can reply to comments from my phone now too. Not sure how I feel about this, lol. I came to your actual site to write this reply. Now I’m going up to reply to your original reply. Geez!! 🙂